Access: The reading or writing of data; as a verb, to gain entry to data. Most commonly used in connection with information access, via a user ID, and qualified by an indication as to the kinds of access those are permitted. For example, read-only access means that the contents of the file may be read but not altered or erased. Access Control List: (ACL) a list of the services available on a server, each with a list of the hosts permitted to use the service.
Access Time: The time interval between the instant that data is requested and the instant that it is received.
Account: Your subscription to a networked computer system.
Account name: Same as your login ID or user ID. The word you type at the "Login:" prompt; your electronic name.
Address: A character or group of characters that identify a register, a location or some other data source or destination.
Admin: Short for Administrator, A user with extra technical privileges for "custodial" work on Wikipedia – specifically, deleting and protecting pages, and blocking abusive users Advertising: It’s a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Aggregate: A total created from smaller units. For instance, the population of a county is an aggregate of the populations of the cities, rural areas, etc. that comprise the county, a total data from smaller units into a large unit. Example: "The Census Bureau aggregates data to preserve the confidentiality of individuals.
Aggregate data: Data that have been aggregated. Algorithm: A set of rules for solving a problem in a given number of steps.
Alias: See nickname.
Analog: A method of storing information, used by most audiotapes, videotapes and laserdiscs (and all LP phonograph records, remember those?). An analog device uses a physical quantity, such as length or voltage, to represent the value of a number. By contrast, digital storage relies on a coding system of numeric units.
Anchor: An HTML term for code that lets you link to a specific point in a page, using the "#" character. You can use them to link to a section of a page Application Layer: Layer seven of the OSI reference model. It serves as a means by which applications access communications services. Application: The use to which a data processing system is put within a given discipline, such as a payroll application, an airline reservation application or a network application.
Application program: A program that is written for or by a user that applies to the user’s discipline.
Application software: A group of programs designed to perform tasks that can be tailored to user’s specific needs.
Argument: A value supplied to a procedure, macro, subroutine, or command that is required in order to evaluate that procedure, macro, subroutine, or command, Synonymous with parameter.
Archive: A subpage of a Talk page to which some parts of the discussion are transferred, to reduce the size of the Talk page. Rarely, the term may refer to the page, for outdated historical material, such as when disk space has become full, a file with a structure that allows storage of multiple files within it in such a way that the names of the files can be listed and files can be individually added and deleted. The terminology is typically associated with microcomputers. On a mainframe, such a file is typically called a library.
Article: An encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but there are also pages that are not articles, such as this one...
ASCII: American: Standard Code for Information Interchange (pronounced ask-ee). The form in which text characters are handled in most computer systems and networks ASCII text has no special characters for formatting such as underlined or bold characters, font changes, etc., thus can be viewed on any personal computer or terminal.
Assembler: A program that converts symbolically-coded programs into object level, machine code. In an assembler program, unlike a compiler, there is a one-to-one correspondence between human-readable instructions and the machine-language code.
ATM: Asynchronous Transfer Mode. A standard for cell relay that uses fixed length cells of 53 bytes, 5 bytes of which are headers. It can support multiple services including voice, video and data.
ATM Forum: An industry-wide effort that is now an international consortium of more than 400 companies who define ATM interoperability specifications and promote industry-wide cooperation to help proliferate ATM and thus drive implementation costs down.
Audit: A personal or computerized review process that accounts for the adequacy, effectiveness, security and overall functionality of a data activity.
Authentication: Process of establishing who you are.
Authorization: Permission to access non-public information or use equipment that is either fully or partially restricted. A process of establishing what you can do. Autonomous system: A collection of one or more networks that are administrated by the same entity. Each regional network (such as SURA net) is an autonomous system.
Audio: Hearing (or audition) is one of the traditional five senses. It is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations via an organ such as the ear.
Author: An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. The second entry goes on to clarify that, when using the term author, the "anything" which is created is most usually associated with written work.
Auto confirms: A newly registered user is still subject to some of the same restrictions as anonymous users – for example, inability to move articles or edit semi-protected pages, although some restrictions, such as the restriction on anonymous users creating pages, are lifted. When a user is auto confirmed, these restrictions end, currently, a new user must make ten edits and wait four days to be auto confirmed
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Backbone: Refers to a piece of cable used to connect different floors or departments together into a network. Also generalized to a network that connects networks together.
Background processing: Users may use a terminal for one project and concurrently submit a job that is placed in a background queue that the computer will run as resources become available. Also refers to any processing in which a job runs without being connected to a terminal.
Backspace: A keyboard operation that moves the cursor one place to the left. A destructive backspace erases characters as it goes, thus allowing users to modify what has been typed (distinguished from the left- arrow key).
Backup: n. A resource that is or can be used as a substitute when a primary resource fails or when a file has been corrupted. v. To save as in to make a copy in case of future failure or corruption.
Bandwidth: A piece of the spectrum occupied by some form of signal, where it is television, voice, fax data, etc.. Signals require a certain size and location of bandwidth in order to be transmitted. The higher the bandwidth, the faster the signal transmission, and thus allowing for a more complex signal such as audio or video. Because bandwidth is a limited space, when one user is occupying it, others must wait their turn. Bombarding the Internet with unnecessary information is referred to as "taking up bandwidth."
Baseband: A network medium that uses only one carrier frequency. Examples are Ethernet and PhoneNet.
Basic: Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. A commonly used personal-computer language, first developed at Dartmouth during the 1960s.
Batch processing: Originally, a method of organizing work for a computer system, designed to reduce overhead by grouping similar jobs. In one scheme, jobs were collected into batches, each requiring a particular compiler. The compiler was loaded, and the jobs submitted in sequence to the compiler. The term has come to be applied to background processing of jobs not requiring user intervention on multiuser systems. See compiler.
Batch query: A query that has been saved so that it can be used more than once and run in the background.
Binary number: A number written using binary notation which only uses zeros and ones. Example: decimal number seven in binary notation is: 111.
Binary: A file containing one or more strings of data bits which are not printable characters. Some binary files may be computer programs or other forms of data that contain no text characters at all. Binary files cannot be displayed on screen, but can be downloaded for use with appropriate applications on your computer. Binary (base 2) is also the building block of computer information, representing "on" or "off" and "true" or "not true" as 1 or 0.
Bit: A binary digit, either a 0 or 1. In the U. S. , 8 bits make up one byte; in Europe, byte equals one word.
Bitmapped terminal: A terminal that can turn individual screen dots on or off.
Bitnet: Because Its Time Network. Started in 1981 by City College of New York and Yale University, it is a network linking hosts at educational and research institutions in the United States, Canada, Europe and other countries using the RSCS protocols merged with CS Net to form CREN.
Bits per second (bps): The speed at which bits are transmitted.
Block: A sequence of words or characters written contiguously, such as into a group, by a computer and stored on a disk, diskette, magnetic tape, etc.
Bluetooth: Bluetooth is a wireless protocol for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks (PANs).
Bold: A way of emphasizing a word of text, as in darker type or brighter characters on a video display terminal.
Booting: Turning on your computer.
Break: An interruption to a transmission; usually a provision to allow a controlled terminal to interrupt the controlling computer.
Bridge: A device that connects two networks and passes traffic between them based only on the node address, so that traffic between nodes on one network does not appear on the other network. For example, an Ethernet bridge only looks at the Ethernet address.
Broadband: A communications medium on which multiple signals are simultaneously transmitted at different frequencies. Also refers to switching capability implemented on this medium that allows communication between devices connected to it. In telecommunications it is defined as any channel with a bandwidth greater than voice grade (4 KHz).
Broadcast: A single message addressed to all nodes on a network.
Browser: A software tool used to read electronic documents. Mosaic, Netscape and Lynx are the most popular browsers.
Buffer: A temporary memory for data normally used to accommodate the difference in the rate at which two devices can handle data during a transfer.
Bug: An error can be a hardware malfunction or a software programming error. Bulletin board (BBS): A computer system which can be called using a modem.
Bus topology: Network wiring commonly used by Ethernet in which all nodes on the network see all packets. Byte: A group of adjacent binary digits, usually 8, on which a computer operates as a unit; often used to represent a single character.
